RTS Stock Exchange Clearing Member Initiation Fee Increases By 50%

At its December 9th, 2003, meeting the RTS Stock Exchange Derivatives Committee decided to increase the clearing member initiation fee by 50% to 300 thousand rubles. The increase becomes effective February 1st, 2004.

The decision was also made to increase the Guarantee Fund payment to 500 thousand rubles. The effective date for this increase will be decided upon during the next Committee meeting.

These changes were introduced to increase reliability of FORTS Derivatives market.

The Committee also decided to waive the clearing member initiation fee for every company replacing the existing company-member, upon current member's written notice. This decision is made so that companies have the right to sell their places to new market participants.

FORTS, a unified derivatives market operating since September 19, 2001, is based on trading and settlement technologies and software that were implemented at and have been successfully used by St. Petersburg Stock Exchange for 8 years. RTS acts as the trading system and the clearinghouse on the integrated market. 84 companies from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg, Samara, Rostov-on-Don, Kazan and Abakan FORTS participants trade 8 futures contracts and 3 options.